It’s been a busy couple of weeks. It’s performance review time at my day job but I’ve also been proofreading Travis Heermann‘s new self-published book – Sword of the Ronin. I backed the original Kickstarter project and when Travis emailed out to backers asking for help proofreading the manuscript I stuck my virtual hand up.

Sword of the Ronin is the second book of the Ronin trilogy (the first being Heart of the Ronin) and I’d originally planned to read the first and second novels back to back. Obviously, that wasn’t practical – Travis needed the proofreading done by the beginning of May and I don’t read quite that quickly so I jumped right in with the second book. I wasn’t sure whether that would be an issue but Travis drip feeds information from the first book so I never felt lost.

Sword of the Ronin mixes historical elements with fantasy into a fast paced adventure and I really enjoyed reading it. There’s plenty of action and some really effective writing – particular the part where our hero, Ken’ishi, ends up in…okay, no I won’t spoil it. Things get quite graphic in places so bear that in mind, but those scenes worked well for me; particularly that bit where Ken’ishi ends up in…okay, okay, no spoilers.

It was odd, reading a book I wasn’t familiar with as ‘work’ rather than pure enjoyment but it was fun – I’m a sucker for stories set in feudal Japan – and I was able to spot some typos and point out some things that seemed confusing or inconsistent, at least to me so hopefully I’ve helped make the book a little bit better.

Travis recently sent out sample of the limited edition and it looks fantastic, I’m looking forward to seeing the final product. I also need to go back and read Heart of the Ronin

We’ve also been making our final preparations for our third marathon, tomorrow’s Vancouver Marathon. Basically, that means a handful of runs at “race pace” to get a feel for what that’s like, and lots of sitting around. I also use this final week as an excuse to eat things I really shouldn’t be eating (Twix being the vice of choice this week) but that’s not really recommended. We’re aiming to beat our Victoria Marathon time which was 4:41 but it feels like I haven’t been training as diligently as I should have been so that may be optimistic, especially as it’s going to be pretty warm tomorrow.

Thanks to our local Running Room store, we got to see Ultramarathoner Ellie Greenwood on Wednesday. She talked about race prep and motivation and I came out of the talk feeling really pumped up about the race. We’ll see how long that lasts – did I mention it’s going to be warm tomorrow.

Oh, and we went to see the Canucks in the first round of the NHL playoffs but the less said about that the better – heartbreaking.

[The article Proofreading in the Pudding by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on May 4th, 2013]